Castor bean
Ricinus communis
Family · Euphorbiaceae · Can kill
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The big palm-leaved shrub that grows on waste ground and roadsides all over the south. The spiny capsules hold speckled seeds, pretty as beads, which contain ricin.
Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground · Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture
Also known ascastor oil plant
How to tell it
Huge leaves with seven to eleven lobes, often reddish. Clusters of capsules covered in soft spines, green or red. It grows fast and reaches three metres in a year.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None at home. The industrial oil is extracted by a process that destroys the toxin, but the raw seed is among the most toxic natural substances known: chewing two or three can kill a child.
The law says
An invasive alien species in Portugal. Do not plant or propagate it.